Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University.
Top Cogn Sci. 2023 Jul;15(3):452-479. doi: 10.1111/tops.12675. Epub 2023 Jun 23.
Understanding factors that promote conservation attitudes is essential given ongoing environmental crises and the need for sustainability. Our research adopted various close- and open-ended tasks to explore: the extent to which U.S. urban adults (Study 1) and children (Study 2) have a basic conception of humans as part of nature, cognitive factors that predict more human-inclusive concepts of nature, and, finally, the relationship of their nature concepts and other individual differences to environmental moral concern and biocentric reasoning. General environmental moral concern and biocentric moral reasoning were a focus because both variables have previously been linked to sustainable attitudes. Across studies, adults and children did not tend to categorize humans as part of nature except when induced or disposed to attribute mind or life to nature. Among adults, a human-inclusive nature concept did not predict environmental moral concern or biocentrism. However, the degree of exposure to nature was positively predictive while a cluster of beliefs about humans as intrinsically unique, superior, and influential (human exceptionalism) was negatively predictive. Among children, a basic human-inclusive concept of nature was related to environmental concern but only among children who also tended to reason in ecological terms. These findings have important implications for sustainability efforts: They suggest that environmental moral concern and biocentric attitudes may be enhanced over-development by nature exposure and interventions that enduringly promote human-inclusive concepts of nature and ecological-systems understanding. Such intervention effects might be achieved by selectively inducing individuals to attribute mind and life to non-human natural phenomena and scaffolding accurate mechanistic understanding of evolution and common ancestry, which may also help to inhibit the development and deleterious effects of human exceptionalism.
了解促进保护态度的因素对于应对持续的环境危机和实现可持续性至关重要。我们的研究采用了各种封闭式和开放式任务来探索：美国城市成年人（研究 1）和儿童（研究 2）在多大程度上具有人类是自然一部分的基本概念，预测更具包容性的自然概念的认知因素，以及他们的自然概念和其他个体差异与环境道德关注和生物中心主义推理的关系。一般环境道德关注和生物中心主义道德推理是一个重点，因为这两个变量以前都与可持续态度有关。在各项研究中，成年人和儿童倾向于将人类归类为自然的一部分，除非被诱导或倾向于将思维或生命归因于自然。在成年人中，包容性的自然概念并不能预测环境道德关注或生物中心主义。然而，接触自然的程度与环境关注呈正相关，而一系列关于人类内在独特性、优越性和影响力的信念（人类例外论）则呈负相关。在儿童中，基本的人类包容性自然概念与环境关注有关，但仅在那些倾向于从生态角度推理的儿童中才有关联。这些发现对可持续性努力具有重要意义：它们表明，环境道德关注和生物中心主义态度可能会因过度接触自然和干预而增强，这些干预措施会持久地促进人类包容性的自然概念和生态系统理解。通过选择性地诱导个人将思维和生命归因于非人类自然现象，并构建对进化和共同祖先的准确机械理解，可以实现这种干预效果，这也可能有助于抑制人类例外主义的发展和有害影响。
